


A Mountain Of Homework

by FictionPenned



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27483547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: Hermione’s nimble fingers idly turn the page of her book. “I don’t need to prove anything.”There is a great huff of breath as Ron collapses back onto the worn carpet. “Good. Then you won’t mind that Harry and I are going to sit here swapping answers for the next few hours while you do…” Ron turns to look over his shoulder at her, trying to find the right words to describe her smug lurking. He comes up short. “…Whatever it is that you’re doing.”“Eloquent, Ron,” Harry says, excavating a rather battered-looking quill from his pile of supplies and settling in for the long haul. “Now that you’ve made your point, should we start putting a dent in it?”Written for Fic In A Box 2020
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Fic In A Box





	A Mountain Of Homework

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hadrian_Pendragons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hadrian_Pendragons/gifts).



Fire crackles in the hearth of the Gryffindor common room, sending dancing light and shadows across the many students who occupy it. Though it is a perilously late hour, it has been a particularly bad week insofar as homework is concerned. Every professor seems to have issued it in droves — demanding everything from six inches of parchment on the magical properties of Australian plants to a diary full of predictions for the New Year — and per usual, Ron and Harry have put all of their assignments off until the last possible moment. Based on the number of ink-stained fingers and tired eyes surrounding them, they are not alone in their misfortune.

“Do you want to do the Potions stuff, I’ll do the Divination nonsense, and then we’ll switch?” Ron asks, looking up from the mess of wrinkled parchment and haphazardly stacked textbooks spread across the floor in front of him like an unusually thick, oddly academic carpet.

From her place on the sofa behind him, Hermione whacks him in the head with a book

Ron bristles, immediately putting a hand to the sore spot on his head and whirling around to face her. “ _Ow!_ Hermione, what was that for?”

“I’ve been telling you two for years that you shouldn’t do this. One of these days, you’re going to get caught cheating and spend the rest of term sorting through dead mayflies or herding diricawls,” Hermione drawls, flipping her book open and flipping through as she tries to locate the place where she left off reading. “If you’re going to end up in detention, you could at least make sure that there is a good cause behind it.”

Harry scoffs. “Like what, exactly?”

“Well,” Hermione says, swinging her feet up onto the sofa cushions beside her and leaning against the pillows. Her head hits something hard in the cushion, and her nose wrinkles. With a huff of frustration, she sits back up and begins a slow, careful dissection of the pillow with a nonverbal spell and the eerily steady tip of her wand as she draws it in a straight line across the fabric. “We have gone to detention for worthy reasons before, haven’t we? We returned that dragon to Charlie our first year.”

“Come off it, Hermione,” Ron replies, chucking a balled up piece of parchment over his shoulder. The projectile misses her entirely, but it still manages to make its intended point. “That was five years ago, wasn’t it? Name _one_ better reason to go to detention than trying to get our homework done on time.”

“You both know that it’s not the doing homework that’s the problem, it’s the _cheating_. Everyone else here does their own homework, and you two are the only ones who don’t.” She extracts a broken decoy detonator from the pillow and tosses it aside before she begins to steadily stitch the gash closed again.

Harry’s teeth sink into the inside of his cheek as he bites back a laugh. “Hermione, do you honestly think that people are doing their own homework? There’s a group of Seventh Years in Ravenclaw who make a pretty penny by doing other people’s homework for them, and at least we’re not doing that. We’re just using each other, is all. Surely, on the scale of things, it’s a bit more reasonable what we’re doing.”

“You’re still not learning anything this way.” Hermione settles back against the newly repaired pillow. From somewhere behind the sofa, the broken decoy detonator makes a sad, squelching noise.

“Sure we are,” Ron argues. “We’re learning exactly half the material each, aren’t we?”

“And where is that going to get you come exams?”

With a groan of irritation, Harry leans back and tosses his barely opened copy of  _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6_ to one side. It nearly lands in the fireplace, a crime that Hermione would have no doubt murdered him for.  “You don’t need a perfect score to pass, Hermione.”

Hermione tuts her tongue against the back of her teeth and buries her nose in her own book. “You do if you want to be employable.”

“Mate, what I don’t think you noticed,” Ron observes with a shrug, “Is that he’s Harry Potter. Even if he’s completely useless, he’ll probably get a job. If anything, I’m the one who needs to be worried, and since I’m not worried in the _slightest_ , I think it’ll work out all right in the end.”

Hermione’s eyes dart upward from her book. “Ignore me if you want, but I’m not going to be a shoulder to cry on when you fail your NEWTs next year.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ron protests, rising to his feet. He is slightly too gangly to look intimidating, and Hermione is entirely nonplussed as he stands over her. “You can’t just jump from exams to NEWTs like that. Somebody might think your entire argument is baseless, and you’re just grasping at straws to justify some sort of moral and academic superiority.”

Hermione’s nimble fingers idly turn the page of her book. “I don’t need to prove anything.”

There is a great huff of breath as Ron collapses back onto the worn carpet. “Good. Then you won’t mind that Harry and I are going to sit here swapping answers for the next few hours while you do…” Ron turns to look over his shoulder at her, trying to find the right words to describe her smug lurking. He comes up short. “…Whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“Eloquent, Ron,” Harry says, excavating a rather battered-looking quill from his pile of supplies and settling in for the long haul. “Now that you’ve made your point, should we start putting a dent in it?”

Ron shrugs as he moves his attention back towards his own mess. “Suppose so.”

Just over his shoulder, Hermione licks the tip of her finger and turns yet another page of her book.

Harry glances up at her. “Don’t suppose you’d be kind enough to help, Hermione.”

Hermione raises a single eyebrow, staring appraisingly at first Harry and then Ron. “I guess I can call you both idiots if you get too far off track.”

“That’s good enough for us,” Harry says.  
  
Ron groans, but nods his own agreement, and with a small, grateful smile, Harry pushes his glasses a bit higher up the bridge of his nose and settles in to do his assigned half of the homework.


End file.
